The plant you are describing is the Olea europaea, the renowned Common Olive, a truly classic and enduring tree. Your specimen is already quite substantial, standing at about 100cm (1 metre) tall in its 22cm pot, promising to add an immediate and beautiful impact to your garden or landscape.

🌿 Foliage, Form, and Appearance

The Olive Tree is an essential evergreen feature, providing attractive foliage throughout the entire year. Its leaves are narrow, slender, and possess a subtle, glossy green colour on top, often paired with a lighter, silvery underside. This elegant foliage, combined with the tree's naturally slender branches and robust trunk, gives it a characteristic Mediterranean beauty and timeless sophistication. It requires minimal maintenance, making it a breeze to care for. It does not have any spines.

📏 Size and Growth

At 100cm, your Common Olive is already a noticeable presence. When grown in the ground in suitable climates, this tree can become large and long-lived. When kept in a pot outdoors or in a garden setting in cooler climates, its growth is naturally more contained, but it will maintain a beautiful, bushy form and add significant height and structure to your space.

🌸 Flowering and Fruiting

The Olive Tree typically produces small, creamy-white flowers in late spring to early summer (around May or June). These blooms are often inconspicuous but carry a light, mild fragrance. Following the flowers, the tree may produce small olives (fruit) in the late autumn/winter. The production of fruit adds a charming authenticity, though it is dependent on the tree's maturity, sun exposure, and local climate conditions.

💧 Care and Environment

Caring for the Common Olive is famously straightforward, making it an excellent, low-maintenance choice.

• Placement: This plant thrives in the sun, making it the perfect choice for a spot in your garden that receives plenty of sunlight. It is highly tolerant of heat and dry conditions once established.

• Water Requirements: The Olive Tree is drought-tolerant, but when potted, it needs regular, deep watering during the warmer months. Allow the top few inches of soil to dry out completely between waterings. Avoid any situation where the roots are left to sit in standing water.

• Winter Care (Crucial): If you live in a region that experiences hard or prolonged frost (below approximately -10°C), your potted Olive will need winter protection, either by moving it indoors to a cool, bright area (like a conservatory or unheated garage) or by wrapping the pot and trunk securely.

Note: The fruit of the Olea europaea is non-toxic. However, raw olives are extremely bitter and require curing (brining) before they are fit for consumption.